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Upanishads : " The Cream of Vedas"
Vedanta ( Veda +anta i.e; the end of Vedas ) as the literal meaning connotes comprises the philosophical portion of Vedas, called the Upanishads.
Of about 280 Upanishads unearthed so far, 108 have been accepted as authorised texts , and out of them have been commented upon by great Acharyas lika Sri Sankaracharya , Sri Ramanjacharya, Sri Madhavacharya and thus are classified as major.

And it is also true thal all scriptures in the world indicate, advise and insist upon the glory of "tapascarye and rituals."

Surely, those cannot be a combined conspiracy against the faithful.

In the science of Religion, rituals are insisted upon as preparatory lessons for a seeker, and tapascarya-s are preparations for a training of the mind and intellect of the meditator.

When one has practiced for a sufficiently long, worship etc., and has undergone a certain amount of intelligent tapascarya, one becomes tranquil in his inner life and gains a certain amount of single pointedness of application with intellect.

Only when the mind and intellect are thus tuned up, can the individual success…

That the Truth cannot be perceived by the senses, has already been explained.

Here, the 'Upanishad-s' add that Truth cannot be gained through rituals and penances ( second line of mantram ).

It is ordinarily the belief with all faithfuls that worship and sincere penance ( Tapas ) do reveal, for the worshipper, " GOD OR TRUTH" "This is a fallacious statement in the Science of Religion, and is a logical absurdity in thought"
Action by finite individuals making use of the finite objects, cannot result in an achievement which is "INFINITE AND ETERNAL"
OUT OF A BALL OF CLAY ( MUD ) WE CAN NEVER MAKE A CHAIN OF GOLD;

If Truth be thus such a vast unimaginable and inconceivable one, at once here, there and everywhere, it would be the legitimate doubt in every seeker as to how and where he can realize this vast divine factor.

True to the Aryan culture, imagination and mere theory have no hold upon the people and unless they are practical, they are rejected.

So the Rishis of ancient have given us in this mantram the method of making their great theory a practical experience.

The scripture says that Truth is realized here, in the "Cave of the heart."
The technique has already been discussed earlier exhaustively in more than one place.

Mother Sruti is here trying to find an expression to express the unfathomable, vast, the all-pervading.

Naturally she has to say that Pure Awareness or Consciousness is a "circle whose centre is everywhere."
It is at once at every point in the heart within us, as well as outside us --- at the farthest imaginable or conceivable point in space, time or thought or imagination.

Wherever and whatever we are aware of, be it through the medium of seeing or thinking or feeling.

We can be aware of things only when they are within the frontiers of our awareness.

Thus, Pure Consciousness in its absolute nature is equally here within us and also at the farthest imaginable point

"Farther than the farthest, it is here within."
Here is another example wherein those who are foreigners to the Aryan ( mean "Sreshtan" ) tradition and those who are Aryan-s by 'birth ' ( not correct by Bhagavad-Gita ), but foreigners by education, find themselves dumb-founded and outwitted.
To them, here is a palpable contradiction, a madness of thought, a lunancy praised to the level of the genius!
O else, they argue how can any great saint or seer dare define anything in the world as to be located at one and the same period of time, at once at the farthest point and also at the nearest.
It is at such instances that the scriptural texts need the great benediction of a living saint who can, standing …

Divyam and Acintya-rupam ---- Self-luminous and in-conceivable or unknowable :-

The Spark of Life in us is certainly the illuminating principle behind our sense-organs and our mind and intellect.

It lights up everything, including the light - giving objects such as the Sun and Moon, the Stars and the Fire.

In fact in its very nature it is nothing but a mass of light : - not "light" in the ordinary sense in which we know it, but as Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa would say , "Light without its physical properties and known qualities."

In short, it is Awareness or Consciousness.

If Truth be Awareness, it is evident how our intellect cannot understand the Awareness behind it.

Brahmam, the Supreme Reality, is great or vast because it is all-pervading.

The very term "brhat" means in 'Samskrtam' vast or great; and hence the term "BRAHMAM"
for the all-pervading to mean,

"That which pervades all and which is pervaded by nothing."
Hence, the reader is warned that since explanations of many of these terms have already been given in all details in our early discussions we shall only hint here at the significance of these terms.

Those who are doubtful of the full import are requested to refer back to my previous blogs.

With the knowledge of Reality, the entire amount of ignorance ( about it ) in us must automatically end.

Thus, when ignorance has ended, the source of desire also gets choked; naturally the flow of scorching thoughts end, and the devastating acts and competitions exhaust themselves.

The term aptakamah --- for which there is no equivalent or even a powerfully expressive term in the english language --- clearly indicates the perfect state of tranquility in a seer, both within and without.

The seekers free from deceit and delusion, pride and vanity, criminality and falsehood, and having no desire, enthusiastically seek and surely discover the realm of Truth.

What this realm is and what are its specialities will be explained in following mantram-s.

The extra importance is given to truthfulness because the Sruti declares that not only is truth the goal and truthfulness the path, but the very path is laid with "Slabs" of truthfulness!!!
A consistent way of living, on the values of intellectual truthfulness, says "Sri Swami Sankaracharya," widens the path and makes it an easy grant-trunk road to spiritual success.

Devayanah : - ( last word of second line of mantram )
This term may be taken to be, in the most general sense, a life of intelligent spiritual striving.

The path divine runs through truthfulness and is laid by the concrete acts of truthfulness.

Technically however, 'devayanah' is the path which stands in contrast with other technical name given to the …

The necessity for truthfulness as explained in this mantram can never be over-emphasized in spiritual life and hence Mother Sruti, noted ever for Her brevity and economy in expression, is again dedicating yet another mantram to bring homeb bto us the importance of this intellectual honesty born of heroism.

Very pertinently Swami Sri Adi Sankaracharya in his commentary says that as the mantram stands, though we read.

"Truth alone wins, and not false-hood."

In fact, no great quality, however noble and divine it may be, has itself any strength or capacity to do or undo the man, living his life.

It is only when we lend our own personality in our identification with the noble qualities, that they gather in themselves an energy-…

Our capacities, mental and intellectual, are at present ineffectual because of their grossness; and the denseness of the mind is directly proportional at the amount of animal-ism in us.

Once, through the above practices, one starts living the life of self-control, truthfulness and meditation upon the spiritual contents in him, the animal-ism slowly dies away and when he thus becomes purified ( kshina-doshah), last term of the mantram, his mind and intellect become more and more subtle and therefore, capable of greater awareness.

And ultimately he comes to realize the seat of "ALL-AWARENESS" within himself.

Thus, to a house householder ( family man), perfect brahmacaryam is to live in Self-control, indulging only for getting children, ( in case, that much self-control not possible for new young couple not more than three times a month ) only.

Many a young family has been wrecked by disorder and discord because, one of the partner becomes all of sudden over-enthusiastic and suddenly takes to the vow of the Self-control without caring to train his partner also in the divine path.

Again, a sudden and rash embrace of bramacaryam has its own psychological and physical repercussions.

Unless the mind and body are slowly trained to this great task, instead of their flowering forth into great powers, they succumb and die away to perish.

"TAPAS IS BROODING-THOUGHT" : - This is not the unintelligent gross TAPAS of the body which is, to some extent, good to a certain type of men in teaching them self-control, both of body and mind.

When one has practiced the vow of truthfulness and meditation ( tapas), one becomes more and more fit to delve into the secret caves of the scriptures and understand the real import of the mantra-s.

Thus, the stydent who had his own initiation into the sacred texts earlier comes to gain brighter and greater glimpses of an ever-increasing prospect of newer significance and ampler imports in the texts of the mother Sruti.

But in the spiritual sense of the term, "SATYAM" should play in the field of the intellect.

When the external impressions of the world gathered by the mind are filtered through the intellect, the thinking-principle in man, they come to certain judgments and thus evaluate the minds, men and institutions, events and incidents.

Having thus come to a discriminating judgement, if he were to compromise himself in his thoughts and actions, and thereby come to think or act his thoughts and actions, and thereby come to think or act against his own intellectual convictions, he will be doing, spiritually, a great falsehood.

Thus, when one is convinced of the God-theory and the Divine Nature of the One Self through observations, analysis, st…

Satyam ( truthfulness ), Ahimsa ( non-injury ), Brahmacaryam ( self-control ) are the three main corner-stones of the Temple of Hinduism.

Even when our scriptures enumerated these three fundamentals for a purely godly life, they took pains to see that Satyam ( truthfulness ) has been mentioned as the first.

"Satyam" is that which is not false.In ordinary transactions of life we mean by truthfulness, a complete faithfulness between the thoughts in the mind and the words expressing them.
If, for example, we are thinking that a thing is bad and we say that it is good, we have committed an adultery of conscience and in this instance we are said to be false or untrue.

Very Important Mantram full of Vedantam, study carefully, and store in your memory for ever throughout your life.

MUNDAKOPANISHAD

CHAPTER-3.

SECTION-1.

MANTRAM -4. { Supreme knower of Brahmam }

Discussion-4. "Kriyavan" ***......

Here, in the mantram, this absurd idea of **sleeping saints and idle-masters** has been atom-bombed by the term "Kriyavan."

He must be active; and he alone can, in the true sense of the term, be active.

His *selfless action * alone can bring in any enduring cultural upliftment for the society of animal-men.

If we have today anything to be congratulated upon in terms of our mental and intellectual purity, and in any sense if we can claim any nobility or superiority over the animal or the brute, it is all entirely due to the blessings of men of God-realisation.

Very Important Mantram full of Vedantam, study carefully, and
store in your memory for ever throughout your life.

MUNDAKOPANISHAD

CHAPTER-3.

SECTION-1.

MANTRAM -4. { Supreme knower of Brahmam }

Discussion-3. "Half-understanding ..... dangerous ..... than not knowing at all ...

1. Half-understanding of any religious texts or a scripture is more dangerous than not knowing it at all.

2.
It is probably, the half-learned book-worms that have brought
about in Bharatham in all religions and others, the tragic
tradition that the realized Rishi has, after the
Self-Discovery, no work to perform.

3. There are, no
doubt, statements to that effect in the scriptures, but
therein, any one who is well initiated into the truth of the
literature can understand that Mother Sruti has meant only
the renunciation of all "desir…